The Concept of Hell

Kafka said:
Mexico is poor and poorly run. America is rich. America has also benefited immensely from the work of these people who cross the border. Which is why this has been a real issue since probably the beginning of the 20th century. Even Ike was having to deal with this headache.

It isn't because Mexico is full of rapists who want to rape American women. It isn't because Mexico is the largest assemblage of Al Qaeda/ISIS/Hezbollah/Hamas/Symbionese Liberation Army terrorists trying to get into America to kill us all. Those kind of folks often come in on visas like the 9/11 hijackers.

It's because we in America not only benefit from the labor of these people we also actively ENCOURAGE IT. I lived in SoCal. It's SUPER EASY to hire an illegal at the Home Depot. And the Lawncare Services hire illegals all the time. And most of them do it KNOWINGLY.

So it's just as much US as them. WE are inviting the person to 'break into our house' because we think we can take their shoes.



I think you are missing the key points:

1. Show some basic human compassion. I know that's hard in cases like this but remember these people are almost all just trying to get a better life. Anyone with half a brain and half a human heart should be able to understand this

2. WE are as much responsible for them being here as they are. WE invite them with our $$$$. We use their labor.

3. Study after study finds time and again that these undocumented aliens are LESS LIKELY to commit crimes while here than the average native born American.


NO ONE is proposing completely open borders. NO one. Not a single person. But the answer does NOT lie in demonizing and making up lies about immigrants eating pets and raping all over the place. Yes there are bad people among them. Just as there are bad people among us.

The answer is going to be costly and it will require the practice of human compassion. I know those are two things the MAGA movement is not ke the problem you run
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Kafka said:
Mexico is poor and poorly run. America is rich. America has also benefited immensely from the work of these people who cross the border. Which is why this has been a real issue since probably the beginning of the 20th century. Even Ike was having to deal with this headache.

It isn't because Mexico is full of rapists who want to rape American women. It isn't because Mexico is the largest assemblage of Al Qaeda/ISIS/Hezbollah/Hamas/Symbionese Liberation Army terrorists trying to get into America to kill us all. Those kind of folks often come in on visas like the 9/11 hijackers.

It's because we in America not only benefit from the labor of these people we also actively ENCOURAGE IT. I lived in SoCal. It's SUPER EASY to hire an illegal at the Home Depot. And the Lawncare Services hire illegals all the time. And most of them do it KNOWINGLY.

So it's just as much US as them. WE are inviting the person to 'break into our house' because we think we can take their shoes.



I think you are missing the key points:

1. Show some basic human compassion. I know that's hard in cases like this but remember these people are almost all just trying to get a better life. Anyone with half a brain and half a human heart should be able to understand this

2. WE are as much responsible for them being here as they are. WE invite them with our $$$$. We use their labor.

3. Study after study finds time and again that these undocumented aliens are LESS LIKELY to commit crimes while here than the average native born American.


NO ONE is proposing completely open borders. NO one. Not a single person. But the answer does NOT lie in demonizing and making up lies about immigrants eating pets and raping all over the place. Yes there are bad people among them. Just as there are bad people among us.

The answer is going to be costly and it will require the practice of human compassion. I know those are two things the MAGA movement is not keen on.
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It's irrelevant that Mexico is poor and poorly run and America is rich. Emotions are not a rational argument.

Stop being a fool. The border is wide open whether people "propose" it or not. You're not going to get away with pissing on my leg by trying to convince me it's raining. I'm not a leftist.

The answer is shut downer the border. Illegal crossings are up as I clearly provided evidence for and which you completely ignored. BTW trying to make "feel bad" for not having compassion only proves my point.

I'm all for legal immigration but if you break the law and sneak in all you're entitled to is prison. Now try making an actual argument not from emotion.
 
Yakuda said:
It's irrelevant that Mexico is poor and poorly run and America is rich. Emotions are not a rational argument.
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It's not emotion. It's a fact. And that's why we have the issue on our SOUTHERN border and not our NORTHERN border.

Yakuda said:
The answer is shut downer the border. Illegal crossings are up as I clearly provided evidence for and which you completely ignored. BTW trying to make "feel bad" for not having compassion only proves my point.
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No, compassion means addressing the problem, not making up dollar store blood libels about "illegals". And if you think you can "shut the border" you are the fool.

Yakuda said:
I'm all for legal immigration but if you break the law and sneak in all you're entitled to is prison. Now try making an actual argument not from emotion.
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I'd say the person who is busy screaming about "closing the border" and throwing everyone who crosses into prison might be the person with a more emotionally charged view of the issue.

You certainly aren't serious about a workable solution.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Obviously, I don't believe in Hell.
Eternal damnation for the transgressions of a brief, finite lifetime is beyond ridiculous.

However, the concept of Hell was clearly manifested with a certain type of person in mind,
and today, in our time, the perfect example of that person is a Trump supporter.

Today's trumpanzee is either a criminal, a supporter of criminals,
or, at the very least, a criminal sympathizer.

The core values closest to their rotted hearts
are racism, xenophobia, misogyny, theocratic superstition, and anti-intellectualism.

The Trump supporter has major, debilitating deficiencies in every aspect of mental status--
intelligence, wisdom, sanity, and morality.

And this is why Hell cannot exist.
Nobody would willing choose these severe genetic defects.
As easy as it is to hate a trumpanzee--

I, for one, have a difficult time imagining NOT doing it--

it probably isn't their fault.
We can't blame a cockroach for not being born a unicorn.
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What is actual relative time to an ancestor only alive since conceived happen with the numbers of the entire species physically separated into 5 categories living in plain sight daily, or per rotation living conceived to dead so far.

Clocks and calendars only measure time existing in series parallel positions adapting in time as occupying space here as all anyone became since birth.

16 great great biological original parents to a second generation of siblings and cousins that became 8 great grandparents adding a 3rd generation gap of 4 grandparents adding a 2 parenting generation gap, which comes down to 5th generation of each great great grandchild never existed prior to conceived since inception of this species native to living uniquely alive in this universal location so far.

In this thermodynamic sequencing of events as ancestrally follow the same methods as original 16 great great grandparents a brain would recognize, intellectual relative time is just debating how else evolving could have worked throughout history of people making choices to agree to disagree life is self evidently eternally separated as genetically changing numbers left alive today as equally timed apart in plain sight now.

Common core of power of suggestion corrupting every generation gap lived up to this rotation of the planet. Self evident evolving isn't a mystery when navigating space with your brain, not minding social consensus.
 
Kafka said:
It's not emotion. It's a fact. And that's why we have the issue on our SOUTHERN border and not our NORTHERN border.



No, compassion means addressing the problem, not making up dollar store blood libels about "illegals". And if you think you can "shut the border" you are the fool.



I'd say the person who is busy screaming about "closing the border" and throwing everyone who crosses into prison might be the person with a more emotionally charged view of the issue.

You certainly aren't serious about a workable solution.
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Any "solution" that allows people to illegally enter the country and be rewarded for is no solution. I'm STILL waiting for your address so when I'm homeless with my kids I can invade your home.
 
Yakuda said:
Any "solution" that allows people to illegally enter the country and be rewarded for is no solution. I'm STILL waiting for your address so when I'm homeless with my kids I can invade your home.
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I'll try to explain it to you and I'll use real simple language so you will be able to understand:

I don't want you breaking into my home and stealing my food. BUT unlike you it is insufficient for me to just point a gun at you and drive you away. It is MY goal to make sure I vote for people who will set up a better welfare system so you and your family don't starve on the street.

That's called FIXING a problem, not just driving it off.
 
Kafka said:
I'll try to explain it to you and I'll use real simple language so you will be able to understand:

I don't want you breaking into my home and stealing my food. BUT unlike you it is insufficient for me to just point a gun at you and drive you away. It is MY goal to make sure I vote for people who will set up a better welfare system so you and your family don't starve on the street.

That's called FIXING a problem, not just driving it off.
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So don't invade your house but invade the country. You're a hypocritical piece of shit.

No fixing the problem is closing then border and checking who it is we are allowing in. You do they in just because you dragged your ass to the border. Your too retarded though to understand that. Leftists "fix" the problem by playing word games. The homeless become "unhoused" and illegals become "undocumented". Pure leftist bullshit.
 
Without even arguing the merits of the border arguments,
two things are certain in my mind. Certain, period, actually.

First, the Republicans chose to not address it so they could run on it.
This alone is immorality at a Hitlerian level,
which is not hyperbole
because that's exactly that to which they now aspire--openly.

Second, some of the most intellectually compromised working class conservatives
who are screaming about the border the loudest
should have at least five other issues which are more important to their actual livers.

Bitching about the border while ignoring more immediate problems FOR THEM
is what they've been trained to do by their leaders.
 
Yakuda said:
So don't invade your house but invade the country. You're a hypocritical piece of shit.

No fixing the problem is closing then border and checking who it is we are allowing in. You do they in just because you dragged your ass to the border. Your too retarded though to understand that. Leftists "fix" the problem by playing word games. The homeless become "unhoused" and illegals become "undocumented". Pure leftist bullshit.
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You don't want the problem fixed.
 
Kafka said:
I know I"ve been just as bad as anyone else in denigrating the MAGA folks. And I probably will continue to do so. But there are times when I wonder if, perhaps, both sides could dial back the rhetoric for a second and actually try to APPRECIATE the other side's view, even if we don't agree with it.

Trump sparks something in Americans. Either we despise the surficiality and mendacity of Trump or we love the strongman who says it like it is and stands up against wokeness.

But in order for us to actually mend the nation short of the bloodshed we are surely running full speed toward now, we need to really try to see the other side's view without resorting to simply writing it off to the other side being <insert whatever we disrespect here>.

Trump supporters may very well be less inclined to be the sober, reflective and painfully self aware of their limitations, but they are still functioning adults and it would help if we understood WHY they are rubbed wrong by things like Woke and other forms of progressive "inclusion". SURELY everyone must value being included!

I come from the rural midwest. I didn't share a lot in common with my peers, I was always kind of a weirdo, but these people are good people. Rural America DOES feel less well represented in media. So after a while they seek to affirm their own identity and uniqueness. And as folks on the Left drift over further and further into an insular view of privilege and Coastal lifestyles, the need for the folks in the middle to express their need to be accepted for who they are manifests in a form of aggressive backlash to anything that even mildly reeks of coastal elite.

Sure you can point out that Trump is the perfect avatar of coastal elite who has probably never set foot in rural America without it being some special need or by accident, but he is nothing if not a master showman. He and his team have crafted an image to play to that disaffectation of the "flyover states".

Once the polarization starts it only gets more extreme with people of good will on either side slowly being shoehorned into a more extreme version of their own beliefs.

In reality we are a flatter distribution than that. It's just the RHETORIC that is driving the wedge now. These people who strangely support someone I cannot understand, who seems to violate every value held by his base, are still decent and honest people on the whole. They are experiencing a portion of the economy that makes them feel left behind and stressed. People under perceived duress will always rush toward a "simple solution" which is exactly what showman Trump has crafted for them. A simple target to coalesce against. Solutions that sound obvious (but are unworkable in reality) are always going to be attractive if you don't necessarily know the details that will make the solution not work.

I don't know if we on the Left have the answers. All I know is prefer the vibe of the Left. The drive, however loony it can be expressed, to be accepting of all is a valuable ideal. The wish to leverage the power of ALL of us to help SOME of us is also something I think worthy. But I am privilieged. If I lose sight of that I will likely lose sight of why I even need to understand the other side.
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you're overthinking it, egghead Simon.

the whole country needs tariffs and an enforced border.

The "coastal elites" are just high on their own arrogance and stupid as a result.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
The cultural dissimilarities between people
trying to live under the same American government
in my mind
guarantee that that government will never exist in an atmosphere of domestic tranquility.
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First...some who believe in reincarnation say that 'hell' is nothing more than the things that you never reconciled during life. Also, it's very important to accept death as it comes. The 'lost' souls are the ones who did not. I always laughed to myself that if an 18 wheeler were barreling toward me, I'd think 'so THIS is how it's going to happen'.

Re. the quote above, there has always been political divide in Washington. What we see now is Newt Gingrich's plot to end Democrat reign in the House coming to fruition. He blatantly stated that unless they adopt a 'monkeys flinging shit' approach to politics, Republicans will never take power.

Instead of governing the way the Founders planned...via compromise...we now have a 'our way or the highway' in not only Washington, but at the local level.

It assures that nothing will ever get accomplished. Instead, our govt. with it's terrible approval rating simply aims to attract the dumbest among us not only to vote, but to run for office.

I'm hoping that when trump is gone along with his lackeys in Congress, we might just see progress. I doubt it, as the Teabaggers began a trend that is very fashionable on the Right.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Let's not overthink this.
Of course rural Middle America is under-represented in mainstream media.
Main-stream media is primarily consumed by urban people in densely populated areas.
It's not a slight.
It's responding to demand.

Further,
this urban coastal American fully believes
that conservative America is every bit as sincere as we are.

Like myself, they have values that are important to them,
but as it happens,
their values and my values are not realistically compatible.

It's not a matter of right and wrong.
Right and wrong appears very different when viewed through different social lenses.

It's a matter of different,
and it's a difference too huge in magnitude to be reconciled.

The "us and them" culture that accurately describes America
comes only as a result of us and them,
regardless of what my preferred candidate says,
actually having MORE cultural difference than similarities.

It's always been my political mantra
that there are NO moderate solutions to radical problems.

The cultural dissimilarities between people
trying to live under the same American government
in my mind
guarantee that that government will never exist in an atmosphere of domestic tranquility.
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The first and second generation kids of recent immigrants assimilate.

All the kids I knew in college whose parents or grandparents were from Iran, Mexico, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon were pretty much thoroughly Americanized.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Assimilate into what?
There's no American monolithic paradigm into which they might assimilate.
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Assimilated into America. I saw no tangible difference between a grandson of Lebanese immigrants or a daughter of Iranian immigrants, and the American college kids of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock who were their college peers
 
Cypress said:
Assimilated into America. I saw no tangible difference between a grandson of Lebanese immigrants or a daughter of Iranian immigrants, and the American college kids of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock who were their college peers
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We've had seriously different life experiences, obviously.

I can see substantial difference between white Irish-Americans and white Italian-Americans in Boston alone.
Perhaps a bit less at the third American born generation level and beyond,
where there's already been a lot of ethnic mixing,
but up to second generation level, it was really obvious.
I know. I lived it.

Those are just white people in Boston.
And the difference between us and Anglo or Germanic whites in Middle America or the South
is even greater still.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
We've had seriously different life experiences, obviously.

I can see substantial difference between white Irish-Americans and white Italian-Americans in Boston alone.
Perhaps a bit less at the third American born generation level and beyond,
where there's already been a lot of ethnic mixing,
but up to second generation level, it was really obvious.
I know. I lived it.

Those are just white people in Boston.
And the difference between us and Anglo or Germanic whites in Middle America or the South
is even greater still.
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Pride in one's ethnic heritage is not unamerican.

I don't think the question of whether one likes bangers and mash, focaccia, or falafels is really a significant and tangible distinction that prevents assimilation. My father faced a language barrier and was largely more comfortable with the Russian-immigrant community, so in a certain limited sense he self-segregated. But I think any kid at my high school would have thought of me as basically just another American kid.
 
Cypress said:
Pride in one's ethnic heritage is not unamerican.

I don't think the question of whether one likes bangers and mash, focaccia, or falafels is really a significant and tangible distinction that prevents assimilation. My father faced a language barrier and was largely more comfortable with the Russian-immigrant community, so in a certain limited sense he self-segregated. But I think any kid at my high school would have thought of me as basically just another American kid.
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Cypress said:
Pride in one's ethnic heritage is not unamerican.

I don't think the question of whether one likes bangers and mash, focaccia, or falafels is really a significant and tangible distinction that prevents assimilation. My father faced a language barrier and was largely more comfortable with the Russian-immigrant community, so in a certain limited sense he self-segregated. But I think any kid at my high school would have thought of me as basically just another American kid.
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I'm not talking about pride in ethnic heritage, C.
I'm talking basic mores and behavior.
I'm talking methods of social interaction.
I'm talking family life.
In fact, the two things that DID bring Irish and Italian Americans together in Boston
were the Democratic Party and unions. And possibly the Red Sox.

But even that's changing, now, I will admit.
Most northeastern urban and suburban whites are admittedly pretty similar now.
Italian. Irish. French. Slavs.
German, Polish, and Russian Jews.

But they're still substantially different from rural Middle American and Southern whites.
This election will prove it once again.
 
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